Lighting her pipe and puffing her years,
Grandma Elsie said, “When I was a girl
God showed me my whole life. Scared me.
Didn’t know what I was seein’ ‘til
all that time filled up like a fat man’s belly.
Now I know. Breaks my heart. Makes me so happy.”

Her gin and coffee voice wraps around me
Like a cashmere scarf of spring and autumn.
I recall four innocent eggs from a pigeon’s nest
crashing at my guilty feet. Grandma was that
God revealing the fate of the two sons
and twin daughters I would never know? 
 
Childhood was a slippery diving board
on which often my heart cracked, bouncing,
splashing, into piranha-hosted orgies.
Thrill of being noticed so intoxicating
that I didn’t mind being eaten alive.
The more my life bled, the louder it laughed. 

At night words sneaked into my bed––
triple-sexed pronouns slurped my virginity,
feather-fingered verbs burned me silent––ecstatic.
My gypsy dreams spurted liquid ballads and
perfumed sonnets.  A lexicon of hunger stained
fevered sheets with sticky genius and marijuana tears.  

In daylight I tended carefully my garden of
darkness singing secret terrors to the earth.  
Thus did language authorize my fear
to dismiss itself––and knowledge empower
my body to act with passionate wisdom.
Out of muddy turds flew freedomsongs of mystic blue. 

Slouching towards manhood I dragged with me
a world as well as my dick but mostly––
a heart addicted to the scent of dreams,
arms libertarian in their will to embrace,
a soul eager to bear the sins of Love,
a mind unafraid to waltz naked in fire or rain.
 

By Aberjhani
© July 8, 2006